Vaccines: Preventing Disease and Protecting Health celebrates the ways in which vaccines have played a role in improving the health of the world’s populations. In early sections, the book relates successfulefforts to fight disease with vaccines and looks at the challenges of using vaccines to cope with emerging and re-emerging diseases. In subsequent sections, the authors examine innovative efforts to test the efficacy of vaccines against diseases such as meningococcal infection in Africa, Haemophilus influenza type b, varicella, and hepatitis A, and look at efforts to develop a new generation of vaccines against cholera and typhoid, shigella, and Helicobacter pylori. The book also includes sections on the quest for vaccines against tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, dengue, malaria, and hookworm; the use of vaccines to fight bioterrorism attacks; and regulatory, safety, and public health issues pertaining to vaccines.

The roster of authors reads like a “Who’s Who” in vaccines and public health. Dr. Ciro A de Quadros, Director of International Programs at the Albert B, Sabin Vaccine Institute and Former Director of the Pan American Health Organization’s Division of Vaccines and Immunization, ably edited the book and made valuable contributions to it.

This publication brings together the final reports from three research projects that explored how investments in health affected economic growth, household productivity, and poverty alleviation in Latin America and the Caribbean. The projects were carried out in 1998 and 1999, and came about through the coordinated efforts of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the World Bank.